I believed, more than anything, that you had to be a hundred percent into something—no wishy-washy bullshit. You didn’t get to open a bar by thinking about it and talking about it, youdidit.
And here I’d spent a year waiting for Jamie Burke to talk to me. I’d waited weeks for Dennis Rodman and Unity fucking Financial to get their acts together. If my dad were around, he’d roll his eyes back so far they’d get stuck, and I wouldn’t blame him.
I sat up and nodded at the empty room and my few scattered possessions.
This was going to beokay.It was going to befine.
I'd wanted to know what came next, well, now I knew. It wasn’t gonna be fun, but I could handle it.
I addressed the plants on the table. “Couple more days, Lucille. Then we’ll head to Arizona. And it won’twork out for thebest, but itwillwork out. Because it has to.”
Lucille didn’t argue, which I took as a tacit sign of agreement.
Then I pulled the pillow over my head and groaned again. I was starting to think I reallywasgoing insane. And I blamed O’Leary, New York.
Chapter Two
Jamie
“Fuck. Fuckity fuckity fuck.”I pulled open the door to my truck and hauled myself inside, shivering against the cold, before pulling my phone from my pocket.
Three missed calls and two missed texts glared up at me accusingly, along with the time. Seven thirty-four. As in, two hours after my shift at the diner was supposed to end. As in, two hours after I wasone-hundred-percent-definitely, pinkie-promise, super-sweargonna call Brian so we could get together tonight. As in, two hours after I had failed to call, text, or even send up a smoke signal to let my boyfriend know I remembered his existence.
I hit Call Back and waited for him to pick up… but literally one second later, the call clicked over to voicemail.
I was pretty sure my boyfriend had just rejected my call.
But as Brian’s voice reminded me to leave a message at the beep, I couldn’t seem to make myself feel guilty, or worried, or even really sad. The overwhelming emotion I felt wasrelief, even though it meant I’d be going home and climbing into bed alone. Again.
“Hey, Brian. I’m so sorry I missed your calls. I know you wanted to have a serious talk tonight, and I wastotallyhere for it,” I lied, “but I got caught up at the diner. Diane was gonna have to work the grillalone, since Fran hasn’t been doing too well, and we’re still shorthanded since everything with, ah, Shane last fall. And Thursday evenings are always crazy once the town council meeting gets out, but this week Daniel Michaelson was doing a reading from his new book at the library too. Plus, you know there’s that big snowstorm coming for the weekend, and people were eating pancakes and chicken wings like they might never get another chance, so I stayed to help her out, and… I’m sorry,” I said, cutting my rambling short. “Just... sorry. So, uh, stay safe in the snow, I guess. And, um… call me if you want to. Okie dokie… Later.”
So suave,Burke. I hit End and threw the phone onto the center console of my truck, then thunked my head back against the headrest repeatedly. Had I actually just ended a message with the wordsokie dokie?
Why did I do the shit I did?
Why did my own mind actively work against me?
In one corner of my brain, I’dknownI had plans. Hell, I had those plans stored in the calendar on my phone,witha reminder. But, pro tip, calendars only worked if you remembered to check them, and reminders were only helpful when you hadn't put your phone on silent, so essentially, you had to remember there was something you wanted to remember. I seemed fucking incapable of that.
The worst part was, I was really good at remembering other things. Possiblytoogood. I never forgot a work shift. I remembered to celebrate the birthdays of every member of my family—parents, sister, grandparents—even though all but my mom were long gone now. I remembered the exact tone of Coach Simms’s voice when he told me I was an All-Section pitcher my junior year of high school, and the way my heart had skipped a beat when the coach from Meridia College had told me he wanted me to play for his team. I remembered every excruciating second of my cocky, stupid, career-ending attempt to block the asshole from Erlington from running for home plate during the final game of my senior year, and the painful pointlessness of the surgeries that followed, once my athletic scholarship had fallen through. I remembered the night Mitch Turner came to the house to tell us Molly had died. And I remembered finding out, last fall, that her car accident hadn’t been accidental, because she’d been driven off the road.
In fact, I remembered allthatstuff so well, I’d had to create a little bunker in my mind where I could store the memories, only taking them out on holidays and special occasions—meaning, the rare times when I got drunk off my ass—because otherwise the remembering would drive me batshit crazy.
So why did I have this fucking mental block where Brian was concerned?
The guy wascute, with brown hair and brown eyes and tan skin. He was fit as hell from working a variety of construction jobs. He was smart. And had good teeth. And nice, symmetrical ears. He was generally patient. And a decent driver. And he was forever making me try new restaurants, which was agood thingand not annoying, even though he insisted on making me re-try foods I already knew I disliked, just in case.
And yes, okay, he was a little dramatic at times.
Or maybe a lot dramatic.
And he might, possibly, also be just the tiniest bit needy too.
But everyone had quirks, right?
Bottom line, the guy was really, truly interested in me. And given that I was an all-you-can-eat-buffet of issues—space issues, commitment issues, trust issues, you name it—that was a miracle in and of itself.
When we’d dated for the first time, a couple of years back, we’d broken up because Brian wanted more than I could give him. More commitment, more time, more… love. But this time around, things were different. We were going slowly. We were on the same page…
